One of the recent trends in designing automotive vehicles is to equip an automotive vehicle with various extra instruments and accessories. Typical examples of these instruments and accessories are audio players and drive computers (which are the instruments to display the fuel consumption rates and the scheduled times of arrival at the destinations of travel). Provision of the additional instruments and accessories has enhanced the centralization of the switches and the related wiring arrangements on the instrument panel and has made the setups of the instrument panel extremely intricate.
To avoid such problem, it has been proposed to have the switches arranged in a steering wheel pad assembly provided in conjunction with the steering wheel on which only a warning horn switch has conventionally been mounted. The installation of the steering wheel pad assembly in conjunction with the steering wheel however lays down a restriction on the placement of a display unit associated with the switches. If, for example, the display unit is incorporated into the instrument panel as has been customary, the switches associated with the display unit are located remote from the display unit and will bother a vehicle driver in manipulating the switches while viewing the display unit. If, on the other hand, the display unit is mounted on a column-tube covering shell enclosing the steering column tube, the display unit is located closer to the switches associated therewith but may be temporarily concealed behind the steering wheel pad assembly when the steering wheel is turned to steer the vehicle.
The present invention contemplates overcoming these problems by having the steering wheel pad assembly supported independently of the steering wheel and held against rotation with respect to the steering column tube fixed to the body structure of a vehicle.